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*This is my second journal entry. I will be posting subsequent journal entries with photos from my Culinary Arts class (please excuse the crappy photos taken with my phone).

Day 2: Sauces
07.08.2011

Whenever you start anything, you should always start with the basics. Establish a foundation, if you will. That way, you can improve your skills and expand your abilities by building on that foundation. The same goes for cooking, especially with French techniques. And the French love their sauces. So today’s lesson was on the five leading or mother sauces – béchamel, velouté, espagnole (brown sauce), hollandaise, and tomato. In class, we only covered the first four, as we will cover tomato sauce on Italian food day. However, the espagnole was a demonstration, as it is a bit more involved and takes much longer. We did, however, make béchamel, velouté, hollandaise, and cream beurre blanc (white butter sauce with cream).

When I decided to switch my educational focus from biology to nursing and then, finally, to food six years ago, I intended to go to culinary school. However, life, money, and a move from Hawaii to San Diego, California, forced me to put it off indefinitely. Until Tuesday. Tuesday, July 5, 2011, was the first day of culinary arts class as part of the Gastronomy program at BU. This particular round of the course is a first in a lot of ways — it is the first time it is offered during the summer, and it is the first time it consists of 12 Gastronomy students (as opposed to 6 Gastronomy students and 6 students from the community). On the schedule for this first day was knife skills, soups and stocks. One of the assignments for class is to journal every day we have class. Gimme more…